Over and Under (11 page)

Tom turned to the window and began trying to open it—it occurred to me that it might have been a good idea to try that before devoting so much effort to getting us both on the roof. While it was locked in some way, the window frames were so old that the small lock just tore away from the crumbly wood, and the window opened with a screech. Tom jumped in and I followed, closing the window behind me, verifying that no adult on the ground was staring up in horror at us as we broke into the building.

We jumped down from the sill quickly to get out of the sight of anyone outside, kicking up a dry cloud of dust as we landed. It didn’t take long for our eyes to adjust—it was still not completely dark out, and the room was full of large windows. What we saw amazed us.

It seemed that the Smithsonian had not taken all of Professor Borden’s collections. The built-in cabinets lining the walls were crammed with leather-bound books, intricately carved wooden boxes, and a full complement of antique lab equipment: beakers, tubes, and delicate-looking scales. In addition, the room held three parallel rows of large, ornate lab tables. On top of every one stood stuffed and mounted animals. The professor seemed to have had a
particular fondness for exotic rodents, all of them posed by the taxidermist with snarling faces to better expose their long, sharp teeth. Most spectacularly, on the walls above the cabinets, were mounted a score of antique swords and knives, a row of them completely circling the large room. Far, far away, I heard the bang of a gavel and a muted baritone cheer.

“Holy shit,” whispered Tom.

“Look at all this stuff.” It was difficult to decide where to begin.

First I walked carefully to what appeared to be the room’s only door, hoping I could lock it. I was afraid that at any minute someone would burst through it and roust us before we had a chance to take even a brief inventory. Wary of squeaks, I stepped carefully across the dusty wood floor, taking note as I passed of the crates and drawers I wanted to open later, when there was more time, if there was ever enough time. Next to the door, which I was disappointed to see held no lock, I found a glass-enclosed cabinet containing a number of artifacts relating to the institute itself. I got the impression that at some point decades earlier, a local historian had created the small display to inform visitors about the history of the Borden Institute.

A photograph of William Borden himself was at the center. He had a heavy beard and the comfortable smile of a wealthy man who knew exactly how lucky he was. Another document on display seemed to be an old bulletin for prospective students:
The building is new and is one of the finest in the State. It is finely finished and well furnished. Afine Stereopticon has lately been added by Prof. Borden, with views of a great number of places of historic
interest in this and other countries.
The bulletin was signed by the principal of the institute, Francis M. Stalker. One of our five named roads in Borden was Stalker Street, and now I knew why.

Next to the bulletin I found Borden’s autobiography,
Personal Reminiscences.
I flipped through the first few pages, and scanned the part of the book that described his childhood in New Providence. The old philanthropist wrote that three major events from his youth were “indelibly impressed” on his mind. The first was the cholera epidemic of 1832. A friend of his had to quit school in order to help his father build coffins, a foreshadowing of what would become the town’s main enterprise. The second event was a plague of gray squirrels on a biblical scale in 1833, requiring organized squirrel hunts that slaughtered upward of three thousand of the animals every day: perhaps the origin of the good professor’s interest in stuffed rodents. The migrating squirrels were so insensible to danger that they allowed themselves to be killed with clubs. The final event was a spectacular meteor shower in 1834 of such intensity that sleeping people were awakened by the great light. One witness proclaimed, “Oh, my God, the world is on fire!” Borden went on to write, “Never did rain fall as thick as meteors fell toward the earth that day.”

I was shocked at the coincidence, since a meteor shower had been my pretense for getting out of the house that night. “Look at this!” I called to Tom. He didn’t respond.

I looked across the room to see that he had hastily stacked two crates onto one of the lab tables, and from that wobbly perch was attempting to pull a sword from its mount near the ceiling.

I hurried over. “What are you doing?”

At that moment he freed the sword with a grunt, lurched backward, and regained his balance atop the teetering crate, barely avoiding the fall that would have impaled one or both of us. He carefully climbed down to the floor, sword in hand.

“Look at this thing,” he said, awe in his voice. The blade was large and straight, and sharp on both sides. The flange above the grip was slightly gilded, but most of the gold had worn or faded away. The metal had darkened in some places, as if it had been exposed to smoke, but the entire length of it was surprisingly smooth and unpitted—I wondered if that was an indicator of the quality of the steel. A small yellowing tag dangled from the handle, identifying it in old-fashioned script:
Sword, Probably German, 1525-1550.

“Feel.” Tom handed it to me.

It was surprisingly light, weighing no more than my Springfield M6. Although I had never held a sword before, I could tell that it was superbly balanced at the grip—the thing begged to be swung through the air. Also like my M6, the German sword was almost completely unornamented, having been designed purely to serve its function. I assumed that function had been to hack apart invading godless hordes. It took my breath away.

“I’m keeping it,” said Tom as he took it back, already knowing I would object.

“You can’t do that,” I said, although my less scrupulous self was already scanning the walls for the sword I would most like to steal. A curved blade in the corner, like something Sinbad might use, caught my eye.

“Why not?” said Tom. “We keep stuff we find all the time.”

“It’s different when you take something that’s been lost, or left out,” I said. “This is a museum! This would be stealing.” I heard an agitated rumble from the crowd below. Someone must have said something controversial. Tom and I didn’t care. If Jesus Christ himself were addressing Local 1096, I’m not sure we could have torn ourselves away from all that medieval weaponry.

“This ain’t a museum,” said Tom. “This is no different from finding something in the woods. Locking stuff up in this room was the same as throwing it away.”

“This stuff belongs to someone.”

“I thought he left everything to the people of Borden,” said Tom, throwing me off by demonstrating a knowledge of William Borden. “This stuff is sitting here because everyone has forgotten about it.”

“It doesn’t belong to us,” I said. “And this isn’t like digging up potatoes in some field or stealing melons. That thing is really valuable—taking it would be stealing.”

“I’ll bet Professor Borden would want me to have it.”

“Where are you going to keep it?” I asked, thinking I had found my trump card. As hard as it would be for me to hide a gigantic four-hundred-year-old German sword from my parents, it would be impossible for Tom in that army barracks he called a bedroom. “Why don’t you leave it here until we figure out what to do with it?”

Tom mulled it over. “Shit, I did want to go looking for Sanders and Kruer tonight.”

“You did?” That was news to me.

“Yeah…you said you wanted to, remember?”

“I just didn’t know we were doing it tonight.”

“Every time we’re in the woods, we’re going to be looking for them.” I could tell he briefly considered stalking them with sword in hand, but thought better of it. “That’ll have to wait. I’m taking this thing and hiding it in the cave.”

I had to admit that was a good hiding place—no one knew the caves of the area as well, and the thing would actually probably be preserved better in an arid cave than in the musty second floor of the Borden Institute. I thought of my imaginary archaeologist finding the old German sword in the future, an object whose presence in a Clark County cave would be even harder to explain than Tom’s shorts and shoes.

Suddenly the door burst open into the room. Tom and I instinctively ducked down, like rabbits in a bramble. I knew we hadn’t been seen, we were that quick. But I wondered if someone had heard us walking around up there, or arguing, and were now searching for us. If so, it wouldn’t take long to find us.

The intruders shut the door slowly, and then crossed the room, to the windows, one row of tables in front of us. We saw their frayed bell-bottom jeans and work boots as they walked by.

The man in front walked right to the window where we had come in. He opened it a crack.

“This’ll do just fine,” he said. I recognized the voice. It was Ray Arnold, the man who’d fought with Tom’s dad the night before. I heard the metallic clink of a Zippo lighter opening, and then a few seconds later the sickly sweet smell of Clark County weed drifted through the old classroom.

Tom and I looked at each other with some relief. They weren’t up there to bust us; they were there to spark up. If we jumped up and yelled “boo!” they’d probably run out of the room. Tom and I carefully leaned back so we could sit against the tables and wait the potheads out. Tom had the sword lying across his crossed legs.

“This is better than listening to that bullshit downstairs, ain’t it?” Ray exhaled loudly. “Jesus Christ, I am sick of it.” Tom carefully stuck his head around the corner to get a better look, and I did the same.

It was the first time I’d seen a grown man after a genuine ass-kicking. Ray Arnold didn’t quite have a black eye, not the perfectly round, perfectly black, comic-book variety, anyway. Half his face was dark red, however, almost as if it had been scraped badly on the asphalt. I noticed, too, in the way that he put his Zippo back in his pocket, that his fingers appeared to be hurting, as if maybe he’d gotten in a few good licks of his own. He was as wild-eyed as he sounded, with long thin hair and a ragged mustache that twitched when he spoke. With him was Lonnie Vogel, a stocky maintenance man at the plant who also grew Christmas trees on his family farm to make a few extra bucks during the holidays—we got our Scotch pine from him every year. Lonnie delicately took the joint back from Ray Arnold.

“We need to be careful,” said Lonnie. “If we drop this thing in here the whole place will burn to the ground in about five seconds.”

They both chuckled at that.

“So help me,” said Ray, “if one more of those dipshits calls me his brother, I am going to kill him.”

“Yep,” said Lonnie with a sigh, clearly preferring that they not waste a good joint talking about the strike.

“They ain’t my brothers,” Ray continued. “Truthfully, most of ’em are assholes. I might cross the line just to piss ’em off. Just to piss off that dickhead George Kruer.”

Tom and I shot each other looks. Tom was grinning.

“You’re not serious,” said Lonnie, releasing a lungful of smoke.

Ray thought it over. “I didn’t want this strike. And I’ve never told no one no different.”

“You can’t cross the line.”

“Look, man, I’ve got a hungry baby at home and a wife who won’t get off my ass. I was going along with this bullshit, thinking we might get a raise after a week or two, but now they’re killing folks. Hell, I liked Don Strange!”

“I did, too,” said Lonnie thoughtfully.

“Now they’re killing folks, and no raise we get is ever going to make up for the money we’re losing on strike, and I am sick of it.”

“So you’re just going to walk across that line by yourself.”

“I wouldn’t be by myself,” said Ray. “I guarantee you that. I ain’t the only sorry asshole in Borden who needs a paycheck. I’d like to see George Kruer’s face when I take a whole shift back into the plant. You’d follow me across, wouldn’t you?”

Lonnie Vogel thought long and hard, so long I thought he might have forgotten Ray’s question. “I don’t know, Ray,” he said finally. “My dad would kill me if I ever crossed a picket line.”

Ray Arnold thought it over. “That’s true. Your old man
would shit. Well, I’m sure somebody would come with me. I can’t be the only one who sees how retarded this whole thing is.”

There was thunderous applause downstairs, and a chant began:
Ten ninety-six! Ten ninety-six!

Ray started whispering in rhythm: “Ten ninety-six! We’re all a bunch of pricks!”

They both giggled hysterically, as they finished up the last of Ray’s small joint. “Thanks, dude,” said Lonnie. “That was good.”

Ray sighed theatrically. “Let’s go downstairs and see what we just agreed to.” They tromped out of the room, considerably less carefully than when they came in. Ray pulled the door shut behind him as he exited.

Tom and I stood up. A thin layer of reefer haze floated at chest height.

“I’m keeping it,” he said, picking up the argument where we’d left it.

We stared at each other a moment, Tom knowing full well that he always won these debates. A new chant began downstairs that we couldn’t make out. Combined with Ray and Lonnie’s departure, it led me to think the meeting was reaching a climax. We had to make our move soon, whatever it was.

“We need to go,” I said. I ached for the Sinbad sword on the wall, but knew I couldn’t bring myself to steal it, anymore than I could prevent Tom from taking his.

“Then let’s go,” he said, leading the way across the room with sword extended.

We got to the window, and I let Tom go out first. I followed, and carefully closed the window behind me, taking
one last look at all the treasure I was leaving behind. The sun had gone down, which was good news for Tom now that he was officially committing grand theft. Tom knelt down on the small roof. Leaning as far as he could over the edge, he dropped the sword straight down. It stuck in the dirt cleanly right by my bike’s front tire, its weight driving the point into the gravel driveway. Tom jumped down after it, hanging briefly on the roof’s edge by his fingertips before dropping down with a grunt. From above, I watched him pull the sword from the ground like young King Arthur.